“Good... golly,” Jarek groaned, a mix of exhaustion and relief in his voice. “I thought I would never get outta this thing again. Hoo, boy. Excuse the ripeness, folks...”

Team Scarlet peeled their adhesive SimSuits off in the Simnasium, removing their helmets and tugging off their sleeves; the legs were always the hardest part for Nic to wriggle out of, though. He couldn’t help but notice a collective body odor filling the small, circular room, something like an onion gone bad. It was a smell he’d first encountered on Planet Baitian, at a dilapidated produce vendor’s wooden stand, and it was a smell he’d never forget.

Not as long as they were made to use SimSuits for extended periods of time.

“I call shower!” Perri blurted out.

“Me as well!” said Maqsud.

“Uh-uh, I called it first!” Jarek snapped back. “Y’all gonna have to wait!”

“Dude,” said Perri, “there are two showers. I call the other one.”

“Fine, but I got first dibs on the good one.”

“They’re exactly the same!”

“Psh, you know damn well there’s a good one and a just alright one, and I get the good one, capeesh?”

Max hung his head dejectedly. Perri snorted a laugh and taunted him, “Sorry, bud, but dibs are dibs, even way out here past the edge of civilization.”

“Actually,” said Jarek, “come to think of it, I’m more hungry than anything else. Y’all can take your turns now. I’m gonna hit up the kitchen instead.”

“Splendid!” Maqsud exclaimed, rubbing his hands together and flipping sweat-soaked locks of his black hair out of his face.

“Looks like you lucked out,” Perri said as she led the way out of the room. “But I’m warning you, if I catch you peeking, I’m taking my towel and snapping you over the head with it. Got it?”

Nic was sure that Max had some witty reply or a quote about nakedness or bathing or something like that, but he could no longer hear them around the corner as they made their way downstairs.

“[My plant!]” said Shanti through her thought-to-speech software. She took off from the Simnasium toward the bedrooms.

Meanwhile, Nic and Jarek made their way slowly in the direction of the kitchen. Nic was hobbling along on half-trembling legs that could barely stand. His exhaustion was bone-deep, the result of tiring himself out, then finding a second wind, and then burning through that as well. “I’m going to sleep like the dead tonight,” he muttered to break the silence.

“You and me both, brother,” Jarek chuckled. “You and me both.”

“You did good out there, man.”

Jarek responded with a weak smile and a nod. “Thanks. Great leadership, as always. I wanted to give up about three different times, but you... You kept us all goin’. And we got it done. We’re ‘bout to be 100,000 credits richer. Each!”

“Here’s hoping this counts as another W on our record, too.” Nic took one of the auto-refilled bottles of water from the fridge and downed it in just a few gulps, the cold liquid spilling down his chest. It made him think of diving in the ocean; he shuddered.

“So, now that that’s done,” said Jarek, pouring a bowl of cereal and rehydrating a packet of dried milk, “what’s next, boss?”

Nic shrugged. “Same thing you get when you cross an elephant and a rhino.”

Jarek smirked and rolled his eyes. “Max said that the other day.”

“I know, I got it from him. It was the only thing he said that day that didn’t make me want to put him in a headlock.” They shared a laugh. “Anyway, I don’t know, really. RTIFIS should be done analyzing the data from the black box any minute now. Once that’s done, RTIFIS will send a beacon to Red Terraforming, let ‘em know the mission was a resounding success. After that, I’m guessing we’ll get reassigned to another Wargame somewhere.”

“Bro,” Jarek said through a mouthful of cereal, “I don’t even wanna think about going anywhere near that Simnasium for at least a week.”

“Don’t worry—Nereus is pretty remote. We’ll have at least a week or two before our next mission, I’m guessing. Plenty of time to rest and recharge before we start drills again.”

“Sweet.” Jarek brandished the resealable packet of cereal at Nic. “Want a bowl?”

Nic shook his head. “No, thanks. Not hungry. I’m probably going to grab a shower once they’re free and then go to bed. Just waiting on...” He limped sorely out of the kitchen toward the living room. “Hey, RTIFIS.”

“Let us know when you’re done extracting the data from the black box, please.”

“Oh.” Nic shrugged at Jarek, who paused mid-cereal bite to listen to the AI. “Well, we worked hard to get that data. Might as well take a peek. Display Planet Nereus stats, please.”

PLANET NEREUS TEMP.: 4C AV. GRAV.: 110% ATM.: 0.92 ROT.: 41.5 HOURS SURF. H2O: 77% REV.: 426 DAYS BIOMARKERS: /?data missing/ NAT. SAT.: 1 (102% LUNA)

Nic’s heart skipped a beat; when it resumed, it picked up its pace, gradually at first. He wasn’t panicking. He could tell that something was just a bit off, though. He didn’t quite understand it at first.

“Having a little celebratory viewing party, are we?” Maqsud said when he rejoined the group. He wore a towel around his waist and one around his shoulders. “Ah, the highly coveted stats of Planet Nereus. A 41-hour—” The rest of the sentence snagged in his throat on its way out. “...Oh, is RTIFIS still finishing up the extraction?”

“You see it, too,” said Nic. “Something’s...”

“...not right,” Max finished for him, nodding. “RTIFIS, display full Planet Nereus stats.”

The screen didn’t change.

Scarlet 4 changed his approach. “RTIFIS, display Planet Nereus Biomarker Readings.”

Nic gasped quietly—it was the very response he was dreading, but one that he didn’t truly expect to hear.

“Good Lord.” Maqsud ran both hands through his still-damp hair, pacing the living room. “Oh, no, no, no. How could I have been this stupid?”

“What’s going on?” Perri asked, entering the living room in a towel of her own. “RTIFIS done cooking? Whoa. What’s with the... Are you guys seeing what I’m seeing?”

“There were signs all along,” Max went on, still pacing, apparently in his own little world now. He was a welcome distraction for Nic. “The hush-hush secrecy of it all. The urgency. They weren’t here just for the oceans—they were here because of confirmed biomarkers! Microbes, perhaps, but still unlike anything ever discovered in the past!” Maqsud’s eyes flashed wildly from Nic to the other four members of the squad now gathered in the living room, full of a frenzied energy as if he were arguing a case in a courtroom. “You all remember our Space Studies classes. You know this discovery could change human history forever. You do realize the gravity of this situation, don’t you? I... I don’t know why I was so quick to conclude they wouldn’t send us. They couldn’t risk not being included in the Wargame, and because their probe failed, they couldn’t go through the proper legal channels to stake a claim to the planet. Red Terraforming opted to ask for forgiveness rather than permission—just like Black Planet Engineering did. Red Terraforming doesn’t just want a lucrative planet. They want to make history—and the money they stand to make from this is incalculable! Based on our contract, the crumbs they’ll toss us—that’s still retirement money for the entire squad!”

“Oh, my God,” Perri breathed. Her body crumpled into a sitting position on the couch. “Oh, my God. This is really happening.” Her eyes widened, staring off at the surface of Planet Nereus through the viewscreen. “We’re not alone.”

It was too much for Nic to take in all at once. He was vaguely aware of Jarek standing next to him, smelling un-showered, and there was the sugary aroma of his cereal. He was also aware of Shanti entering the room. His head was spinning with the paradigm-shifting reality he was now meant to assimilate into his understanding of the universe.

“You said retirement money?” Perri asked Maqsud. “Retirement, not even a year into our careers... You’re sure?”

“To be perfectly honest, Peregrine, my thoughts are elsewhere,” Max shot back, “but, yes. It’s in our contract. 50,000 baseline per planet won. 100,000 for more lucrative projects under a certain credit threshold. Anything beyond that... we each make 10 million credits, or 0.01% of total revenue, whichever is smaller.” He turned almost drunkenly to Perri as the weight of those words set in. “We’ll each be getting 10 million credits. Assuming we win, that is.”

Perri pulled the blond hair out of her face with both hands. “Just think—with that kind of money, we could do anything!”

I could go anywhere, Nic thought. He didn’t think about his mother as frequently as he used to, certainly not daily anymore, but in that moment, she crossed his mind. He’d be able to track her down. If she was still alive, he could introduce himself as the triumphant son she’d always hoped he’d be, and... otherwise, he’d have some peace of mind in knowing where she spent her last days, if nothing else.

“That was fast,” Jarek murmured, sounding dazed.

“Too fast,” Nic replied, suddenly sobered by a more immediate, smaller-scale unknown. “Even with FTL communication, that’s impossible. Hansen wouldn’t have had time to record anything.”

“No way,” said Jarek. “WorldGov wouldn’t even have time to approve—wait, Wargame against who?”

“Two of them at the same time?” Perri wondered aloud. “What does that mean? Two squads fight it out and winner fights the third?”